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Speaker 1: You're listening to the Saturday Morning with Jack team podcast

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Speaker 1: from Newstalks b.

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Speaker 2: By cycle by cycle bycle. I want to ride ble.

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Speaker 3: I want to ride my busig. I want to ride

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Speaker 3: my bike.

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Speaker 1: I want to ride my busy, want to ride.

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Speaker 3: You see, producer, let me just couldn't resist it. She

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Speaker 3: could didn't resist it more than you are. Jack Taime

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Speaker 3: on newstorgsban as the Tour de France reaches its final

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Speaker 3: couple of leagues. I have been captivated by the drama,

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Speaker 3: the grueling climbs, the triumphant podium finishes as they play out.

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Speaker 3: But some are with an up close personal access to

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Speaker 3: the side of professional cycling that we don't get to

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Speaker 3: see all the time on our screens. Is Kiwi bike

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Speaker 3: mechanic Craig Geeta. Craig has more than twenty years of

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Speaker 3: experience working on the Tour de France. He's worked with

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Speaker 3: some of cycling's great riders', biggest names and most successful

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Speaker 3: teams over the years. He's now the head mechanic for

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Speaker 3: his current pro team, Australian outfit team Jacob Alula, and

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Speaker 3: he's been on the ground, in the car and no

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Speaker 3: doubt on the bike throughout the prestigious race. Craig joins

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Speaker 3: us from France. Kilder, good morning and welcome to the show.

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Speaker 2: Hi.

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Speaker 3: I want to start with a really simple question, Craig,

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Speaker 3: what do you do?

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Speaker 2: I'm a mechanic for Jacob Lula professional cycling team.

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Speaker 3: Right and for people who aren't following the tour, they

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Speaker 3: are one of the teams that's contesting the Tour de

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Speaker 3: France this year. And what does a mechanic for a

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Speaker 3: team and the Tour de France have to do?

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Speaker 2: Basically, we look after all the car as we have.

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Speaker 2: I think we have about nine team cars here. We

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Speaker 2: have a bus and a truck. We take care of those.

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Speaker 2: We wash the bikes every day. Then we prepare them

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Speaker 2: all and make sure that every all the gear ratio

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Speaker 2: is for the particular stage that they're doing next, that

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Speaker 2: the blakes are all working are in proper condition. And yeah,

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Speaker 2: we and then we follow the race during the day,

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Speaker 2: and then afterwards we do a transfer to the next

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Speaker 2: hotel and then we do the whole process over again.

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Speaker 3: Gosh, rinse and repeat, and for a Grand Tour as well.

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Speaker 3: It's a pretty exhausting process. I'm going to ask you

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Speaker 3: about you know how things kind of change over the

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Speaker 3: course of an event like the Tour de France in

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Speaker 3: a few minutes, But how does how does a person

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Speaker 3: go about getting a job like this? How do you

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Speaker 3: become a mechanic in the Tour de France.

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Speaker 2: I think I became one by accident. I used to

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Speaker 2: be a mechanic and my parents' bike chop and rot,

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Speaker 2: and I was a keen cyclist back then, and I

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Speaker 2: came across to Europe to watch, to watch all the

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Speaker 2: big races and race a little bit myself, and I

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Speaker 2: just happened to be in the right spot at the moment.

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Speaker 2: We're a smaller professional team needed a mechanic and they

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Speaker 2: couldn't find anybody else, and they asked if I could

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Speaker 2: go along and help them, so I did, and they

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Speaker 2: were quite happy with my work, and they kept asking

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Speaker 2: and then I eventually, after a couple of months, became

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Speaker 2: full time with them and it just went from there.

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Speaker 3: It's amazing a So how many bikes would a single

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Speaker 3: team use, and across the course of the Tour de France.

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Speaker 2: We would use we have three road racing bikes per rider,

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Speaker 2: that's eight riders, and we're down to seven riders. Unfortunately

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Speaker 2: we had one crash out. And then they have two

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Speaker 2: time troll bikes for the time trolls, a race one

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Speaker 2: and a spare one, which is identical all the bikes.

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Speaker 2: So there's five bikes per rider which are just for

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Speaker 2: that rider, and they're all in exactly the same measurement,

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Speaker 2: so they're identical bikes, so if the rider needs he

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Speaker 2: can get on any one of them at any moment

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Speaker 2: and just continue as normal.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, it's obscene really when you actually break it down

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Speaker 3: and you do the numbers. So you've got forty bikes

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Speaker 3: across eight riders for an event like the Tour de France.

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Speaker 3: Not only do you have to know your way around

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Speaker 3: a bike, not only do you have to be pretty

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Speaker 3: mechanically minded, you must be you must have to be

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Speaker 3: incredibly detail oriented Craig.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, you have to be. Everything's measured by millimeters here,

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Speaker 2: so you have to be as precise as as possible.

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Speaker 2: And we're here with four mechanics, so sometimes if we're

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Speaker 2: having difficulties with something, we can rely on our teammates

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Speaker 2: to double check or look over it to see that

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Speaker 2: you're correct or something needs aesting slightly more. But yeah,

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Speaker 2: but no, it's everything. It's a bit like Formula one

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Speaker 2: but on push bikes.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, So how would the bikes that your cyclists are

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Speaker 3: riding and racing at the moment, how would they compare

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Speaker 3: to the bike that I'm riding to work?

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Speaker 2: If our bikes, well, they're supposed to be the top

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Speaker 2: of the line bikes. Obviously we're sponsored by Giant Bicycles,

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Speaker 2: which are very good bikes, and then kate X is

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Speaker 2: a part of the Giant family, so they supply the handlebars, wheels, saddles,

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Speaker 2: things like that. And then we have Shimanos, so our

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Speaker 2: bikes at the top of the line that we can

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Speaker 2: possibly get and they're actually really really good bikes.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, yes, you'd hope. So if you've got the world

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Speaker 3: to be a cyclists racing them through the Pyrenees, So

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Speaker 3: what do you reckon that you know that plebs that

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Speaker 3: average punters watching the Tour de France, What do you

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Speaker 3: reckon that they don't properly understand about the athleticism of

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Speaker 3: the cyclists and the tour.

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Speaker 2: Well, for the cyclist, that's it's a whole different world.

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Speaker 2: It's a twenty four hour job. You can't just go

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Speaker 2: to work and ride your bike on a Friday and

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Speaker 2: then finish work and go to the pub or down

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Speaker 2: to McDonald's or anything there. Everything they do recovery is

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Speaker 2: super important. They do their training, They then come back

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Speaker 2: and get the massage to make sure that all the

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Speaker 2: muscles in the body are as supple as possible and

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Speaker 2: everything's working correctly. And then their diets are so heavily

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Speaker 2: not restricted, but they weigh their food. They weigh there.

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Speaker 2: They know exactly how many calories they're taking in and

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Speaker 2: how many calories they need to have taken in to

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Speaker 2: be good for the following days.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, and it is the following days. This is the

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Speaker 3: thing that I find amazing. It's not just that you

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Speaker 3: have a massive performance over one hundred and seventy k's

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Speaker 3: up over the Pyrenees or the Alps or something like that,

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Speaker 3: but then you've got to do it again the next day,

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Speaker 3: and the day after that and the day after that.

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Speaker 3: So as someone who moved it, who grew up a

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Speaker 3: bike shop, who moved to Europe and was doing a

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Speaker 3: bit of racing, is obviously a pretty enthusiastic cyclist. Like,

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Speaker 3: how what do you think when you look at them

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Speaker 3: racing at their peak? You know, when you're seeing the

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Speaker 3: best guys duking it out on top of you know,

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Speaker 3: Von Tue or something like that, what are you thinking.

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Speaker 2: To start with? When you're actually here and you're you're

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Speaker 2: you're working around them and you see them all in that,

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Speaker 2: you get a bit of a shock to start with,

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Speaker 2: because they're all the most of them, you know, the

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Speaker 2: GC contenders, the general classification guys who are leading the race.

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Speaker 2: They're tiny. You look at them and you just think

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Speaker 2: they're young. They are young kids. You know, most of

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Speaker 2: them are in there early to mid twenties now where

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Speaker 2: that's sort of changed over the years. You normally peaked

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Speaker 2: sort of in the mid to late twenties, but now

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Speaker 2: these young kids are coming straight out of Matthews and

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Speaker 2: demolishing the world and cycling. But yeah, they're they're they're

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Speaker 2: really tiny. They're small people. They're definitely not your rugby

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Speaker 2: player and they they Yeah, it's just phenomenal how fast

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Speaker 2: they go, how much power they can put out for

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Speaker 2: the size of them. Yeah.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, it's the power to weight ratio that's really key

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Speaker 3: with it all, isn't it. I Mean some of those

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Speaker 3: top contenders, they're what sixty sixty five kgs maybe dripping wet.

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Speaker 3: So you worked closely with Lance Armstrong for years is

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Speaker 3: his mechanic. What was that experience like that? What was

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Speaker 3: he like to work with? Obviously there's a fair bit

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Speaker 3: of additional history that comes with his experience in the

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Speaker 3: Tour de France, but what was your experience.

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Speaker 2: I actually really enjoyed it. I was a little bit

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Speaker 2: nervous to start with. I was in the team before

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Speaker 2: I ended up becoming his mechanic, and he just said

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Speaker 2: this aura about him where he was just a scary

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Speaker 2: looking guy. But when you got got to know him

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Speaker 2: and start working with him, he was actually probably the

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Speaker 2: most the sort of the person with the most sort

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Speaker 2: of Kiwi attitude that that's not a Kiwi. He was

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Speaker 2: laid back and quite funny and joked around all the

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Speaker 2: time behind the scenes. He was just also your sort

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Speaker 2: of typical young American kid sort of style. And I

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Speaker 2: actually really enjoyed it, and it was it was a

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Speaker 2: lot of fun that it just didn't look like that

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Speaker 2: for the that he was like that to the to

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Speaker 2: the public, because you you only sort of saw one

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Speaker 2: side of him through the media, where he was always

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Speaker 2: being attacked and things like that. But I actually really

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Speaker 2: enjoyed my time there. I learned a lot from him too,

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Speaker 2: about the bikes, you know, the way he he measures

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Speaker 2: his setups and all that sort of thing as well,

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Speaker 2: which which I hadn't seen before, And it was he

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Speaker 2: was really professional and also millimeter by millimeter and and

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Speaker 2: and he was a hard working athlete as well. So yeah, yeah, no,

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Speaker 2: it was good.

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Speaker 3: Do you feel like the tour has you know, they've

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Speaker 3: obviously done it kind of a lot of work and

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Speaker 3: cycling over the last few years, but do you feel

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Speaker 3: like they've sort of moved into a new era from that,

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Speaker 3: from that, you know, from the Armstrong era and from

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Speaker 3: all of the controversy around doping and stuff, do you

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Speaker 3: feel like they've kind of managed to rewin the trust

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Speaker 3: of the cycling public and the sporting public at large.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure. It's definitely clear that the sport and

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Speaker 2: as a whole has cleaned up and it's much better now.

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Speaker 2: In the top tier and sort of the top level

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Speaker 2: World Tour which we're in, and then the next level

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Speaker 2: down Pro Conte, pro Continental teams, they all have biological

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Speaker 2: passports now, which is all your blood values put together

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Speaker 2: by all the mandatory tests that you have to do,

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Speaker 2: plus any doping tests that you that you do just

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Speaker 2: in the sport in general, and then those values clearly

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Speaker 2: show if anyone starts to tamp around with anything, it

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Speaker 2: pops up immediately on these biological passports. So then they

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Speaker 2: get sort of they get informed that they're being watched,

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Speaker 2: and if the values continue to shut around a little bit,

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Speaker 2: they'll then take appropriate action. But in general, it's really

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Speaker 2: the sport has cleaned up and it's really good now.

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Speaker 2: But the thing is they go faster now than they

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Speaker 2: used to.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, it's crazy. I mean, obviously there are other

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Speaker 3: things that have developed a lot, the bike technology, the aerodynamics,

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Speaker 3: the nutrition, all of that kind of thing, But I

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Speaker 3: mean it's still ridiculous watching these cyclists, you know, especially

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Speaker 3: at the moment we have. You know, two kind of

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Speaker 3: generational cyclists have been duking it out on all of

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Speaker 3: these recent tours, Taday Pagacha and Johannes Vinger Guard. What

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Speaker 3: do you make of those two as cyclists and the

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Speaker 3: kind of competition that we've seen not only this year

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Speaker 3: but in the last few years of the tour.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, like it's pretty phenomenal that those two quite far

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Speaker 2: above the level of the others and they go head

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Speaker 2: to head and the Grand tours. Vndergard is clearly a

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Speaker 2: super talented rider and a very good rider, but he

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Speaker 2: specifically targets the tour whereas Poga. People now sort of

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Speaker 2: start to claim them as the new successor of Eddie

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Speaker 2: Merks because he wins all different races and he just

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Speaker 2: makes it look easy. He's and he's such a nice

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Speaker 2: person as well. He's always very friendly to everyone. But

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Speaker 2: he's just a phenomenal, phenomenal rider.

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Speaker 3: What's it like when you're in the cars following all

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Speaker 3: of the cyclists, because watching it on TV, a couple

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Speaker 3: of things striking me as really stressful. First of all,

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Speaker 3: how close the fans still are to the cyclist, like

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Speaker 3: waving flags directly in their faces when they're riding up

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Speaker 3: mountains at thirty five k's an hour. Then all of

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Speaker 3: the cars that have to come through in the procession

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Speaker 3: following the cyclist. It just strikes me as an altogether

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Speaker 3: stressful experience.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, it is. It's there seems to me more people

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Speaker 2: here this year than in the past years since since

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Speaker 2: the COVID days. I mean, the tour always has a

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Speaker 2: lot of fans on the side of the road. But

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Speaker 2: this year it's it's incredible that every day everywhere they're

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Speaker 2: just lined up along the road. And there was actually

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Speaker 2: an incident where the Enios team car actually hit a

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Speaker 2: spectator who was standing virtually in the middle of the

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Speaker 2: road and the car was trying to pass another rider

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Speaker 2: from another team to move up behind his rider, and

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Speaker 2: the spectator was was one meter out further on the

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Speaker 2: road and didn't budge and the car collected him on

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Speaker 2: the way past. And it was actually the spectator's fault,

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Speaker 2: but the driver of the car was also penalized and

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Speaker 2: I had to pay quite a hefty fine. But they're

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Speaker 2: lucky that nobody died or was injured, you know, but

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Speaker 2: it does there is the odd accident. Over the years,

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Speaker 2: there has been the occasional accident and death with the

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Speaker 2: spectators standing so close. But yeah, it's a unique sport

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Speaker 2: where it's just it's open to the public. It's not

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Speaker 2: in an arena or a stadium, so it's yeah, it's

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Speaker 2: a little bit crazy, and it's one of the only

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Speaker 2: sports that I think that the public can get so

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Speaker 2: close to the athletes.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, so you're on the road for two hundred and

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Speaker 3: fifty days a year sometimes, which is extraordinary, Graig, and

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Speaker 3: that means a lot of unfamiliar three and a half

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Speaker 3: star hotels. I would have thought, do you have any

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Speaker 3: aspirations for settling down at some point? I know you've

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Speaker 3: done more than twenty years on the tour? Could you

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Speaker 3: do another twenty.

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Speaker 2: I definitely couldn't do another twenty No, how much of

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Speaker 2: my twenty first tour and it's just a groundhole day.

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Speaker 2: It's it's nice. I enjoy traveling around. That's that's probably

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Speaker 2: the nicest part of it. You get to see different places.

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Speaker 2: But now most of the hotels that we travel to

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Speaker 2: every year are also quite familiar and feel like home

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Speaker 2: because you've been there so many times. Yeah, but I

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Speaker 2: think I've still got a few years in me. I

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Speaker 2: wouldn't say that many. But I'm also nervous that when

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Speaker 2: I do stop, I won't know what to do. You know,

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Speaker 2: I don't I've never done anything else, and I might

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Speaker 2: find that I don't really enjoy it. So I think, well,

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Speaker 2: I can I just make the most of doing what

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Speaker 2: I do until it's not possible anymore.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, that's a great attitude. Hey, I'm deeply envious Craig,

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Speaker 3: enjoy the last you know, the last dying leagues of

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Speaker 3: the tour, and thank you so much for giving us

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Speaker 3: your time. We really appreciate it.

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Speaker 2: No, you're welcome.

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Speaker 3: There's Craig Geita. Craig Gita is the chief mechanic for

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Speaker 3: the team Jacob Alula. He is an Olympic selector. There's

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Speaker 3: all sorts of stuff for New Zealand cyclists as well,

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Speaker 3: in two leagues left in this year's Tour de France,

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Speaker 3: which is his twenty first.

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Speaker 1: For more from Saturday Morning with Jack Tame, listen live

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Speaker 1: to News Talks ed B from nine am Saturday, or

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